accomplishments

Aside from surviving years in the ad agency business, I co-founded the online marketing site MarketingVOX, produce the ad:tech conference weblog and publish the award winning (seriously) advertising news and commentary site Adrants. Oh, and then there's AdGabber, a social networking wite for the ad industry.

Highlights with Details Below

Built media operation for high tech division of agency. Grew
media revenue from zero to $38M. (Leo Burnett Technology
Group)

Built and launched national branding campaigns for two of the
agency’s niche technology accounts and one consumer
account. (LBTG: eCredit, Mobilocity. Harpell: Harvard Lager)

Helped convince a small pipe and valve company of the relationship
between brand awareness and street value. Programs put in place
built the foundation for the $38 billion dollar company it has
become. (IPG McDougall: Tyco)

Increased awareness of high technology client to new target
audience by 30%. (LBTG: Information Builders)

Brief Additional Accomplishments

Built and launched MarketingVOX, a news website that covers the online marketing industry.

Won past client back with in-depth market and audience
analysis and a new approach to working relationship. (Leo
Burnett: Mobilocity – in Portfolio section)

Re-launched education-based book company into a family
focused destination web site. Traffic grew 1000% in the first
three weeks. (Harpell: Family Education Network)

Built and launched the media planning and buying operation for
Leo Burnett Technology Group while employed by Starcom Worldwide.
Leo Burnett Technology Group (formerly TFA) was acquired by Leo
Burnett. TFA had no media operation in place and I was brought on
via Starcom, Leo Burnett’s media company, to build and run
the media operation for the four Leo Burnett Technology Group
offices (Austin, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco).
Responsibilities included interfacing with both Starcom and TFA
financial operations as well as participating in all new business
pitches for all four offices. After this period, operation was
then handed to Starlink, a division of Starcom set up to offer
the capabilities of Starcom to small- and mid-sized agencies.

Based on my success, I was retained by the Boston office of
Leo Burnett Technology Group to build this media capability
in-house while Starlink took over for the other three offices.
Grew billings from $0 to $38M and fees from $0 to $2.5M.

Client and Brand

Developed, positioned, and launched two high technology
clients for Leo Burnett Technology Group and one Beer Company for
Harpell. From the preliminary research and account planning
through the development of messaging and final positioning, these
companies were all provided a platform from which to launch their
marketing communications programs.

As an example, for Mobilocity, a wireless consultant and
implementer, it involved primary research into the needs and
expectations for wireless solutions as well as the determination
of who the likely buyers of these services are. It involved a
competitive analysis of brand positioning, competitive spending,
and market segmentation of all potential competitor companies.
And finally, it involved the translation of these findings into a
concise positioning and creative to accomplish this
positioning.

Reposition

New Category

PC DOCS was a company well known in the document management
space. At this time, document management was transcending into
the new space of knowledge management. Many document management
companies were known for simply organizing the flow of paper.
Knowledge management was all about controlling, sharing,
accessing information and collective intelligence for both
tangible (words and numbers) as well as intangible (thoughts,
notes, meetings, conversations).

PC DOCS had the systems in their technology to master the
control of the tangible and pretty much control the intangible.
The challenge was not only convincing the audience of PC DOCS'
abilities but to explain what knowledge management was in the
first place. KM involves a new mind set of truly sharing
corporate information for process to work. That was the biggest
hurdle. One that was more easily conveyed when we were able to
get across the message that collective knowledge has a value and
if a company has value it is therefore seen as valuable by its
customers, investors and Wall Street.

My role was in exploring the KM space and convincing PC DOCS
that, if they wanted to survive, the must transcend into this new
category or risk being seen as a paper filing system with no
added value to a company’s business model.

Increase Awareness

Awareness and Stock Price

Tyco International is a large holding company with many
subsidiaries in many different business categories. It
wasn’t always this way. At the time of my involvement, Tyco
was primarily the parent company to Grinnell, a fire sprinkler
and valve and piping company.

As we now know, among other things, Tyco is much larger, much
broader in scope. Knowing the desire of Dennis Kozlowski, CEO, to
aggressively acquire companies as a means of rapid growth, my
role was in convincing a very lean and very minimalist marketing
organization that marketing can play a key role in increasing
awareness and stock price – two extremely important aspects
for a company on an acquisition track.

The research into this area resulted in their authorizing a
$1.5M budget for marketing to the business community and Wall
Street. A rather small sum for a Fortune 500 company but, for a
company that had never advertised before, it was quite an
achievement. The research provided showed a direct correlation
between the amount of money spent on marketing and the equity a
company had with their constituents. As well, it showed that
increased spending also has a direct correlation to stock price.
So for Tyco, increasing their awareness and their stock price
enabled them to become the conglomerate they are today. Or
rather, the conglomerate they were before Dennis Kozlowski and
the rest of the management decided to steal millions for their
own personal use.

Changing Perception

Information Builders was an old-line data warehousing company.
Most people knew who they were but they could not grasp how this
old company could fit into the newly defined e-commerce space and
how it could benefit their company’s e-businesses.

For years, Information Builders had marketed only to
Information Technology titles, their assumed typical buyers of
technology for corporations. Information Builders could not see
that top management was taking a more important role in the
selection of technologies that could positively serve their
business mission. The importance of technology had risen so high
in the minds of the CEO audience that it was now consuming over
10% of their time. Without awareness to this group, technology
companies would have a very steep hill to climb.

I demonstrated that CEOs and other CxO titles define the
direction of their companies and the processes that must be in
place to accomplish those goals. CxOs are intimately involved
with defining a business need and approving any implementation
that will affect that need. With technology’s ability to
deeply affect a company’s operation, the goal was to
convince Information Builders that it is less of a technology
issue and more of a business issue. The communication had to
change from speeds and feeds to the business benefits that
Information Builders could bring to a company.

Research was conducted to support this thesis and then
presented to the client. With hesitancy, Information Builders
agreed with the thesis. A campaign was then created and budget
allocated to deliver this new message to the CxO audience.
Information Builders never before did this and the results were
incredible. Awareness among the CxO audience increased 30% within
a year.